Chapter 14
A loud pop ripped through the stillness of the kitchen.
“That always scares me,” Mina said with a gasp of surprise as she looked up at Phoebe opening a can of biscuits.
“I’m sorry. I should have warned you. It scares me too. Sounds like something is exploding. Which, when you think about it, something kind of is.”
“Yeah. That’s okay. I should have expected it. I know we need them for the Christmas morning biscuits and gravy casserole. I really appreciate you getting up early and helping me with this.” Mina gave a smile that melted Phoebe’s heart.
Like Phoebe was doing something special by getting up thirty minutes before she usually did.
“You know I’ll do it. And I enjoy it too. I bet your class is going to be thrilled.”
For her home ec class, Mina was supposed to bring in a casserole that would feed everyone. They were trying out different casseroles, since the home ec had been tapped to provide food for the school board meeting later that month. Each kid in the class was bringing in their own special recipe, then they’d vote on them all and choose one to make and serve.
This was a recipe that Mina’s family had made back when Mina lived with her mom and dad.
The thought made Phoebe sad. Mina seemed like she’d mostly adjusted and that she loved living on the ranch. In fact, her mom had reached out, asking for Mina to come visit, if not come back to live, and Mina had instead asked her mom to come to the ranch and spend some time. She hadn’t wanted to go home.
That thought tore at Phoebe’s heart too. She’d been so blessed to have both mom and dad. Of course, they’d been taken away from her in an accident, but at least they hadn’t fought, hated each other, gotten divorced, and created separate families with other people. Talk about instability in a child’s life.
But people did the best they could, and sometimes things just didn’t work out. Maybe they could work harder, try harder, do more, but for Phoebe, she knew there were times where she felt like she was doing everything she could and things just didn’t work.
Tillman’s face came into her mind at that point. He had tried as hard as he could to keep his family together. He was willing to work things out with his ex-wife. But she just hadn’t been willing. And he freely admitted there were things he could have done better. Things he wished he would have done better.
People just didn’t get do-overs.
Phoebe tried to shove those thoughts aside as she enjoyed working in the kitchen with Mina. Mina needed steady, stable influences in her life, and Phoebe intended to be one, for whatever time Mina was with them. She wasn’t going to question God’s timing or His plan. She would just do the best she could with whatever got put in front of her. Right now, that was Mina.
“That sausage smells so good,” Phoebe said as Mina stood next to the stove.
“It’s always so hard not to eat a little bit before we put it in.”
“It would be even harder if my brothers were in here. Sausage and bacon are like impossible to resist for them.”
“I’ve noticed.” Mina laughed a little, and then she sobered, looking around the kitchen. “Aunt Phoebe, can I ask you a question?”
Phoebe resisted the urge to point out the fact that she just had. “Of course. What’s wrong?” She could tell by Mina’s voice that there was something bothering her.
“You and your sisters and your brothers, you’ve kind of become my parents. It’s weird, but I just look at all of you as people who are raising me.”
“I’m glad. I look at you as a child who is my child. In fact, I was just thinking as long as God gives you to me, I am going to do my very best to be the best example I can to you.”
“You guys always say that I’m supposed to do my best, like you just said. Because of God. He wants us to do our best.”
“That’s absolutely true.”
“Sometimes at school, kids tease me for trying to do my best. If I get an A on a test, people make fun of me. It’s like... It’s like you can’t be smart and cool at the same time.”
Phoebe didn’t know what to say. She really didn’t have any experience in this. Her mom had homeschooled her, and she had homeschooled her younger siblings.
Since Mina was an only child, and since no one at the ranch technically had custody of her, they thought it was best to send her to school. Just to head off any issues that her parents might eventually have. Since they could fight over anything, they didn’t want to put red flags up by homeschooling her, since while it had lost a lot of its stigma, it still sometimes made people think that a person was far out and totally weird...and that was Mina’s problem.
“You know, I wish I had wise words for you. But we aren’t homeschooling you because we’re afraid of what people are going to say. Especially if either one of your parents ever think there’s a problem here. We wouldn’t want them to come down on the schooling methods, that’s just one more thing for them to pick on.”
“I would love to be homeschooled!”
Phoebe almost asked if she thought she’d be lonely at the ranch, but she closed her mouth. There was always something going on at the ranch, and when she was being homeschooled, they had access to so many activities, they often had to pick and choose which ones they really wanted, because they were too busy to do them all.
“Maybe that’s something I can talk to some of the others about, especially Claudia, since she makes a lot of the decisions regarding your care.” Claudia was friends with Mina’s mom and had been the one she had asked to watch her child. Claudia brought Mina to the ranch, and everyone had just kind of pitched in.
“I already asked. She said she’d pray about it. But I guess what I was thinking was until I find out for sure whether you guys will homeschool me, I don’t know what to do at school.”
“To begin with, we can get the names of the people who tease you, and we can take them to the principal’s office. But I think sometimes in life, people just aren’t nice. And we have to learn to let the things that they say to us roll off us. Now, in life, you can usually get away from people. You don’t have to sit right beside them in class, or eat lunch with them, or anything like that. If you really hate your job, you can try to find a different one. You can eat outside in your car, for example. But if you’re working with someone you truly don’t like, a lot of times, you need to figure out a way to learn to either like them or to get them to like you.”
Phoebe knew that what she was saying to Mina probably wasn’t what the school counselor would say. But it was like the verse that she had just given Tillman not that long ago. The verse that said to pray for those who despitefully use you and persecute you.
“I have a Bible verse I’d like to send to you. Is that okay?” Phoebe asked, pulling up the reference and copying some verses.
“Sure. Is it going to help?”
“Maybe. I think it shows you that even two thousand years ago when Jesus walked the earth, there were still people who made fun of other people, and He had some commands for us to use. Not that they’re easy, and not that that’s going to just make the whole situation go away. I don’t want you to think for one second that it’s going to.”
“Someone told me that most of the time, you have to walk through hard times, they don’t just disappear. I think that was one of your brothers talking about my family and how my parents are fighting and how I wish that I could just have a family again, although... I really like it here. The more I’m here, the less I want to go back.”
“I’m really happy to hear that,” Phoebe said as Mina walked over and put her arms around her waist. Phoebe squeezed tightly. She wished she could protect her from all the harmful things that happened in the world. She wished she could keep the bullies away from her, keep the kids who wanted to tease her for doing well away, keep her protected from all of the bad things.
But that wasn’t the way life was supposed to be. There were going to be bullies. There were going to be hard things. There were going to be things that Phoebe didn’t think a child should have to go through, and rather than avoiding those things or trying to get them taken away, it was better to help Mina learn how to handle those things. To let her know that there were no easy outs in life. And if there were, it often was to a person’s detriment to take them.
“Now we just have to make sure we take it out when it’s done,” Phoebe said as they slid the casserole into the oven.
“I have enough time to go get ready,” Mina said as she closed the oven door and set the timer.
“I suppose I should comb my hair and put some clothes on that I’m not afraid of being seen in in public,” Phoebe said with a smile, looking at her jammies and imagining that her hair looked wildly crazy.
“It smells good in here,” Tillman said as he walked in the back door.
Phoebe had forgotten about her hair until she had just said something, and then Tillman walked in and made her want to put both hands over her head or at the very least grab her hair and put it up in an impromptu ponytail.
“I’m making Christmas morning sausage and gravy casserole for my home ec class today. I’m in a competition with the rest of the kids in my class to see who has the best meal to serve the school board at their meeting later this month.”
“I think I could be a very good judge of that.”
“Then you’ll have to come to my class every morning.”
“Don’t tempt me. There’s not a whole lot I won’t do for some good food. And that smells really, really good.” Tillman grinned at Mina, and then his phone rang from his pocket, and he pulled it out.
“Excuse me,” he said, looking at Mina first and then Phoebe. “My kids are calling.”
“You can stay in here. Mina and I were just leaving, and it looks like it’s raining outside,” Phoebe said as she walked toward the door. She knew he typically spoke with his children in the evening after he was done working. And sometimes she’d seen him on the phone over the weekends as well. He never said who he was talking to, but when it was around lunchtime or in the evening, she assumed it was probably his children.
When they had their morning meetings, which they’d been doing for the three weeks he worked there, he had never been on the phone with them.
But it made sense that he would talk to them before they left for school.
Since they’d come back from the mediation date, they hadn’t talked much more about his children or his ex or about any of the personal things that were going on in his life.
Phoebe hadn’t said anything more about Priscilla and Wyoming either. Priscilla wasn’t leaving until after the rodeo, maybe to make a decision easier for Phoebe.
Regardless, their conversations had been mostly business, although since the trip, there had been a friendlier overtone to their interactions.
Still, they’d set a very difficult task in front of themselves, and it was going to take all of their concentration and efforts to make it happen. They didn’t really have time to be distracted by the personal things that were going on in each of their lives.
But she didn’t think he was against being a little more personal. She made a note to ask him if everything was okay when they met later that morning. Humming to herself, she followed Mina up the stairs to get ready for her day.